~ When the past and present collide…

Tag Archives: Emerald Comb

Oh dear it has been over a month since I posted anything on this blog. I had a fortnight’s holiday in Ireland in May, travelling round in our campervan, and I feel as though I have barely stopped moving since.

There is a little bit of bookish news to share – The Emerald Comb is currently on an Amazon promotion – 99p on Amazon.co.uk until the end of this month. Grab it while you can!

As a result of this, I now have TWO books with best seller flags which is extremely pleasing. Obviously I needed a screenshot of this – and here it is.

While in Ireland we toured the south-west corner – counties Cork and Kerry. This is where my next novel is mostly set, so I found it very inspiring. No date yet for publication but I will let you know when I have one.

Gertie (our campervan) turned out to be perfect – better than we’d dared dream. I love everything about her. Just as well, because next year we plan to spend six months touring Europe in her! Here she is parked at the foot of Carrauntoohil, Ireland’s highest mountain, which we climbed on a beautiful and memorable day. That’s me, just before we set off.

A writer friend alerted me to this article today, and it has made me ridiculously excited. If you’ve read my book The Emerald Comb you’ll see why, and if you haven’t – well maybe this will make you want to!

In my book (and don’t worry, this isn’t really a spoiler) an old beech tree blows over in a storm, and some bones are discovered at its roots. I did a lot of research around this – making sure bones could survive for hundreds of years under a tree. I picked a beech tree because their wide, shallow roots mean they’re more easily blown over in a storm (compared to, say, an oak) Also they tend to suck moisture out of the ground. Bones last longer in drier soil. Finally, with no tap root the bones would be better able to stay relatively undisturbed. All this is important to my story.

So when I read this article, you can imagine how delighted I was to find out that I’d got my research right – bones really could last under a beech tree for hundreds of years, and be discovered when the tree blows over in a storm! Mind you, I wish now I’d had half the skeleton lifted up
by the rootball as this one was. Didn’t think of that. (And if I had, I’d probably have thought it was too unlikely!)

You know, if I hadn’t already written The Emerald Comb I would right now be so inspired by this Mirror
article I’d be trying to think of a plot surrounding it. I wonder if there’ll be a spate of bones-under-trees novels now? If so, remember that I got there first!

Beginnings are dead easy. I’ve sat in writing classes and written dozens of beginnings, usually with no previous idea of what to write, and often done within a six-minute time limit. Some are better than others, but most could become the start of a story or even a novel.

But endings are another matter. Short story endings need to neatly finish off the story, include the twist, or link back to the beginning, or show the ‘universal truth’ your story is trying to illustrate. Novel endings need to tie up loose ends, leave your characters in a good place, and satisfy your reader. And they mustn’t end too soon – I think novels need a winding-down scene or two, where the main action has finished, to allow the reader to say their farewells to the characters they’ve lived with for the past few days or weeks.

I was looking through the reviews I’ve had for my novel, The Emerald Comb, earlier today. It’s been well received with (to date) 48 four and five star reviews, but there are a handful of three, two and one star reviews as well. The one thing the lower rankings have in common is that they all criticise the ending. They say the ending seemed rushed, and that things were left not quite resolved leaving the reader feeling perhaps disappointed or frustrated.

I find this very interesting, because (and this is a bit of a spoiler, so if you haven’t read it but would like to, skip reading this paragraph) nothing is kept from the reader. There’s no unresolved plot line. By the end of the novel, the reader knows the full truth of what happened. However, the main character Katie does not know everything. I wrote it like this on purpose – one of the themes of the novel is that no amount of research can necessarily uncover the full and complete truth of what happened in the past. If your ancestors really wanted to hide a secret, they probably could, and you’d never know. After exhausting all research angles the best you can do is make an educated guess or conjecture. And that’s what Katie is left with, although the reader knows everything. In my mind the story is resolved, but perhaps the critical reviewers identified so much with Katie they didn’t see it that way! (I’ll take that as a compliment on my skills at characterisation then.)

Some of the other reviews praise the ending for being realistic, and one reviewer stated she was glad I went for the ending I did, rather than the more predictable alternative which some might have expected. There’s someone who really ‘got’ what I was trying to do!

You can never please everyone, but it has made me think hard about the ending I had in mind for my current work in progress, which is another tale of genealogical mysteries. How can I stay true to my themes and yet be careful not to disappoint readers? I think there’s a fine line I need to tread here. Hope I can get it right!

Thankfully, no one’s criticised the ending of The Pearl Locket (so far). Although a number of people have told me it had them reaching for a tissue…

My feet and the ground have been strangers to each other today as I’ve charged around the internet publicising The Emerald Comb. I’ve been featured on a few blogs already, with more to come later in the week, and another blog tour organised for late October. It’s lovely to see a few 5-star reviews already being posted! (Though Becca’s 5-cupcake review is the tastiest so far.)

I’m putting links to all Emerald Comb related blogs, interviews and reviews up on the Emerald Comb page at the top of the blog, so keep an eye on that for the latest!

Later this week I’ll post here about how I went from researching my own family tree to writing a genealogy-inspired novel…

I’m delighted to present the cover for my forthcoming timeslip novel, The Emerald Comb. This is to be published as an ebook by Carina UK on 22nd September. Eek, that’s about three weeks away!

Gorgeous picture, isn’t it? And here’s the blurb for the book:

One afternoon, Katie takes a drive to visit Kingsley House, the family home of her ancestors, the St Clairs. She falls in love the minute she sees it. It may be old and in desperate need of modernisation, but it is her link to the past and, having researched her family tree extensively, she feels a sense of belonging to the crumbling old estate.

When it suddenly comes up for sale, she cannot resist persuading her family to sell up and buy it, never telling them the truth of their connection with it. But soon the past collides with the present, as the house begins to reveal the secrets it has hidden for generations. Does Katie really want to discover what she has come from?

I can’t wait for this to be published – my first full-length novel. It’s all becoming very exciting as the publication date draws near!

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